K40 Whisperer

K40 Whisperer:Control software for the stock K40 Laser controller

Contents

K40 Whisperer is an alternative to the the Laser Draw (LaserDRW) program that comes with the cheap Chinese laser cutters available on E-Bay and Amazon. K40 Whisperer reads SVG and DXF files interprets the data and sends commands to the K40 controller to move the laser head and control the laser accordingly. K40 Whisperer does not require a USB key (dongle) to function.

- Added more descriptive text to "No Backend Error" to indicate libUSB is not installed
- Removed debugging code that could have resulted in the head moving 1" away from raster image.
- Updated raster test pattern SVG file.

Changes in Version 0.04

- Improvements to DXF import to prevent import failures
- DXF import now detects blue lines and designates them as engraving lines.
- DXF import looks for layers that have the text "engrave" in the name and designates items on the layer as engraving lines.
- DXF import now detects the units in the file. If no units are specified the user is prompted to select the correct units.
- Stop button now works during all phases of engraving preparation
- Status updates more during engraving preparation and engraving process
- Stop button now pauses job with the option to resume or terminate the job.
- Added error on detection of color coded text in SVG files.
- Deleted Min/Max darkness cutoff settings for halftone raster images.
- Added Levels settings utilizing a Bezier curve to control the levels of gray-scale images
- Changed scan-line step input to always be in inches.

Changes in Version 0.05

- Added option to support homing in the upper right corner (instead of the upper left corner) for some 50W machines
- Changed the final move after vector engrave and vector cutting to be a rapid move to the starting position (was at working speed move).
- Updated code to support more easily running on Mac computers. Instructions added in the src zip file for getting started on Mac.
- Eliminated the requirement for the PIL/Pillow _imaging C module.
- Started updating for compatibility with Python 3 (this is a low priority work in progress)

Only boards that work with LaserDRW will work with K40 Whisperer. (Moshi boards will not work)
To see which board you have you can go to "Properties" from the LaserDRW (or CorelDraw) Engraving Manager window and look at which board is selected for the "Mainboard" option. You can also just at the the controller board. (The controller board is the circuit board the USB cable plugs into)

Additional Controller Boards That May Work:- 6C6879-LASER-M1*- 6C6879-LASER-M*- 6C6879-LASER-B2*- 6C6879-LASER-B1*- 6C6879-LASER-B*- 6C6879-LASER-A** I need users to test the indicated boards. If you want to do the testing you can contact me and I will work on getting the code ready to test. I am not writing the code for each of these boards ahead of time because I don't know if there are any of them in use.
(My e-mail address is in the image at the bottom of this page)

Linux: Setup instructions for Linux are included via the README_Linux.txt file in the "K40_Whisperer-x.xx_src.zip" file.

Mac: Setup instructions for Mac are included via the README_MacOS.md file in the "K40_Whisperer-x.xx_src.zip" file.
(I can't help with Mac specific questions. I have no experience installing software on a Mac.)

Trouble Shooting:

Creating Input for K40 Whisperer

1. Create your a design in Inkscape.
- Use RED lines to indicate cutting.
- Use BLUE lines to indicate vector engraving.
- Use BLACK to indicate raster engraving (this can be shapes, paths or images)
2. Adjust the size of the document to match the area you want to export (You can use "File" - "Document Properties" - "Resize Page to Content" to make the page the same size as your design)
3. Within Inkscape select "Save" to save the design as an SVG file.
4. Open the SVG file you just saved in K40 Whisperer.

Halftone (grayscale) Images with K40 Whisperer

In addition to red blue and black you can also do greyscale with K40 Whisperer.
The stock boards that work with K40 Whisperer are not able to controlling the power output by the laser.
However, grayscale can be created by creating a halftone image (dithering) of the raster image.
below is an example of an image that was engraved with the halftoning option turned on in K40 Whisperer.
The truck photo came from Wikimedia Commons: Madrid_-_Fargo_Power-Wagon

In order to generate the halftone image in K40 Whisperer the Halftone setting in the Reaster settings needs to be selected.
When the Halftone option is turned on the image displayed in K40 Whisperer will be shown in grayscale.
There are some settings for the output levels. The defaults should work pretty well. Here is a brief explanation of the settings:

Slope, Black: This is the ratio of the output level vs the input level on the dark end of the grayscale spectrum.
Increasing this value will make the darker areas of the image get darker at a faster rate but but more of the image will remain lighter.
If a lot of your image appears too dark you can increase this value. (A value of 1.0 is no adjustment, The K40 Whisperer default has some adjustment based on my experimenting)

Slope, White: This is the ratio of the output level vs the input level on the white end of the grayscale spectrum.
Decreasing this value will result in the lighter parts of the image become lighter at a slower rate as you approach the white side of the grayscale spectrum.
(A value of 1.0 is no adjustment, The K40 Whisperer default has some adjustment based on my experimenting)

Transition: This setting determined how abruptly the transition from the black slope to the white slope occurs. The larger the number the sharper the transition.